Yvonne's Blog

Magical Adventures Await

Rough Draft Completed

I'm super excited to let everyone know that I was able to finish my first draft of Luminata in the writing goal that I gave myself. My work in progress is one step closer to reaching your hands.

For those of you that know me, I'm a little bit of an over achiever. (Gasp! Did I just admit that in a permanent place?) I'm constantly looking for what I can do and what I can do better. The harder the challenge the more satisfying completing it is. I really do love learning new things.

Back in September I started to think about what I wanted to do until the end of the year. I just finished my specialty designation at my day job and wasn't starting my Bachelor's until January. So, in my world things were just too calm. (Sorry, honey, I know you'd like me to be a little more relaxed, but I just can't sit still.)

My thoughts drifted back to my novel. I love reading and have had the idea for Luminata percolating in my subconscious for a long time. How long? Over 10 years. FOREVER. I wrote the first 50 pages or so prior to my last document save March 6, 2009. Nothing was written in over 7 years. I decided to set myself a goal. I would finish my rough draft by December 12th. Why that day? It was before the holiday rush because I didn't want the additional stress during the holidays.

Bite-Sized Goals

I broke my goal down into easier to handle pieces. First I had to figure out how many words or pages a typical fantasy novel was. After much researching I deduced that most fantasy novels were a minimum of 80,000 words and an epic fantasy was 100,000-150,000 words. Wait? What?! I had a mere 28,000 words written.

So, if I give myself nine weeks, that's an minimum of 5,700 words a week, or 20 pages a week. I laughed when I calculated that. How could I possibly write 20 pages in a week when I'd only written about 50 pages previously?

Well, I gave myself the "perfect world goal" of 20 pages a week. Since I averaged 288 words per page then that would get me to the minimum of 80,000 words or 277 pages for a novel. I told myself that it was 100% ok to not make this goal. Why? Because anything I accomplished during that time was infinitely better than zero pages over seven years. But, if I made my goal? How satisfying would that be?

So, I worked at it weekly and kept my goal front and center above my laptop screen. Every Sunday I would write down how may words I was at. I was able to average about 5000 words a week! It was working.

Then life happened. I am in a choir and had a concert that took up my entire week. I wrote a whole whopping 300 words. But I'd make up for it the next week.

So Sunday December 11th came and I had my last chapter to write. It was truly cathartic. After everything that I put Jessi through to be able to write the final chapter summarizing her journey felt a lot like I was summarizing my own journey as a writer.

December 12th accomplishment: 88,383 words and a completed first draft.

So, Now What?

Well, now that my rough draft is done I have to figure out the next steps.

As many of you have seen, I've created my author's platform and am working on creating something that has value for my readers. I learning about myself as an author and learning tons about the industry. I will keep creating this world for all of you.

For Luminata, I am learning what actual revision entails and will set up my next bite-sized goals to polish my manuscript. I'll share with you as soon as I have those goals laid out. I plan on having this by the end of the month.

My next "perfect world goal"? Publish Luminata in 2017. I'll keep you updated.